Well, I ended up with some time sooner than I thought and the play went faster than I thought, so here we go!
Act 5 NM could be summed up with a recurring theme of annoying ranged attackers.
Burning dead archers in the foothills are just terrible, even with cyclone armor. Bloody foothills had
spear cats. Nice shield
here, probably won't see use though. Infernal pit had dart flayers and witches,
not real fun. Also got fire snakes in one of these areas, who appear to not completely do fire damage as they could damage me with cyclone up.
Dang nice weapon....for someone else. First Hel rune, took long enough! Rune luck has been pretty bad, you know it's bad when you SS a Hel rune XD.
Anya went pretty smoothly, got snakes, undead, and
gloams, but nothing too scary really.
I was pretty worried about Nihl of course, as I have no corpse disposal and need to be in close quarters to kill stuff effectively. Found some
frostburns, probably not going to use (60 str, and I don't need mana that bad)
Nice pelt here, but 2os would have been nicer. Haven't used it yet, but will maybe put some stuff in it when I arrange my hell gear. I really wanted to go home, as I was worried about Nihl...
but it wasn't meant to be. Unfortunately my fears were
immediately confirmed upon entering the Halls of Vaught. I popped back up the stairs and grabbed my amulet of life everlasting I had grabbed for this session and went back down to slog through. It was a pretty rough level, merc died many times, but I was never in serious danger with careful play.
Nihl was scary as always, and he was Extra fast, which made him an extra pain to get to and kill. But he eventually died, and I was able to get out of there at last!
Most everything else was pretty smooth sailing up to the ancients, except for the icy cellar. Hell lords, snakes. Champion and boss hell lords are really tough for me, my merc can't stand up to them for any amount of time, and they are fast once frenzied. Thankfully I bought a teleport staff to keep on switch. Luckily the cellar map I got had lots of
moats to be cheesy with...
Extra fast, thankfully I saw him from across the moat, could have been deeds for sure, and there was actually a double pack of them in
that corner!
I was pretty worried about the ancients, do much can go wrong with no re-rolls and especially at /p8. Ended up going smoothly though, was able to separate 2 out at the start and neither were too terribly damaging at least.
Talic first. More extra fast? Yay!
Then Madawc, slow to kill with SS, but whatever.
Then Korlic, who was easy. Used a good 4 of each potion in the fight, and I had a bunch in my inventory, so no risk.
WSK 1-3 were easy except for a champion hell lord pack who I had to separate to get killed. And stupid
ice spawn boss packs.
Minor stair trap on throne level with snakes. And then another
extra fast pack, blood lords this time....ugh. They were a pain for sure. This game was quickly going from annoying ranged to annoying extra fast! Cleared out the throne with no major issues. Knights were the last monster type. And of course, what should happen as I'm heading into the throne to start the waves? The ignore merc bug. Oh man, of all the times for this to happen! But there just wan't anything I could do, couldn't get him killed or restart the game, so we just hoped for the best. Waves 1-3 were simple of course. Wave 4 of course gave me an extra fast pack and also multi shot. Of course even that couldn't kill the merc. Had to do a lot of running, but those guys go down pretty quick to tornado. There was really only one thing I was worried about for Lister. And of course I got it! Extra fast lister with merc ignore is just stupid. I immediately shot out of there with my TP staff, and was able to slowly separate them. Each one required a healing potion or two, as they're just too fast to cast and run from. Lister was a royal pain, I mostly just ran in circles while my hurricane damaged him and my merc did drive by pokings. I swear I took a SS of this, but I must have forgotten. He went down eventually, after much running and potion chugging.
Baal was also pretty horrible. With no merc to occupy him he was constantly draining my mana, frosting me, and cloning himself. He also frequently walked up to melee me, and that hurts pretty bad. It was a long and obnoxious fight, with 5-10 trips back to town I'd say.
Nothing useful in the drop.
Time to go kill the cows and figure out my gear for Hell! Can't decide on a player setting for act 1 yet, probably either 3 or 5. I'm pretty powerful, but the merc can't tank, and there are too many archers in act 1 to go any higher I'd say.
Rhett, level 75, NM cows
Sorc was a tough pick in this tournament. They're fragile enough as it is, much less with the restrictions on vit/dex like you mentioned.
Good luck, and just think of all the extra goodies you'll find!
